Climate Parents organize

Mark Hertsgaard says most parents are in soft denial about Climate Change. His fears for his daughter's future manifest in a nightmare, "...my 7-year-old daughter, Chiara, and I who were crossing the street, frozen in place, as the climate train bore down upon us."

[The nightmare illustration I made doesn't show his daughter.]

Today’s parents don’t vote as if the climate matters.

...I think there are three main reasons for parents’ surprising passivity.

First, many parents don’t know, or choose not to believe, what science says about the climate threat. Most people get their information about such matters from the news media, and media in the U.S. report climate change through political rather than scientific lenses.

Second, if parents do face the facts, they understandably find them depressing. Who wants to think about their kids inheriting such a perilous future? It’s easier to pretend it isn’t happening.

This is especially true given the third reason: a widespread belief that there is nothing one can do to change the situation. The problem is too big, the political system too broken, the polluters too powerful.

As a result, many parents end up practicing what I call “soft denial.” Not to be confused with the denial purveyed by right-wing ideologues, soft denial does not reject climate science per se. No, a soft denier accepts the science, at least intellectually. But because climate science’s implications are so disturbing, the soft denier acts as if the science does not exist. In psychological terms, such a parent is in denial.

...nothing is more urgent than changing the strongest drivers of climate change: the government policies and corporate practices that push greenhouse-gas emissions ever higher. Under current rules, polluters can emit greenhouse gases for free; worse, they’re subsidized with billions of tax dollars. Until that stops, individual lifestyle choices won’t make much difference.

We’re launching a group that aims to mobilize parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, teachers, coaches, and anyone else who cares about young people.

For now, we’re calling our group Climate Parents, because we believe that taking action on climate change has become part of every parent’s job description, just like providing proper food, clothing, and shelter. [emphasis mine]

Replies to This Discussion

How old will your kids be in 2030? Take a look at the second chart from The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), showing how the US will be. Worse than the Dust Bowl. And it won't be a temporary condition, but a stage toward even more horrible conditions.

Every parent has to make sense of what's happening in their own way, and protect their family as best they can. It's true there's an element of Armageddon thinking involved as we try to grasp what the data are telling us. If you don't respect scientific projections, John, on what better source than climate science do you rely to predict what's in store for your family as earth warms?

A comment by CHUCK GASPAROVIC re: "The earth is warming... I agree. but... their projections and computer models are shit."

...political groups on the right, and the media they control... are right about the limitations of models. No model can predict with certainty the future of something as complex as the global climate and ecosystem, and climate models are particularly problematic to test. But it turns out all of science is based on models, including the science that led to smartphones or cancer drugs. The important thing is that the models themselves are based on real data and any inherent assumptions are supportable. The acceptance of one model or another – whether quantum mechanics, evolution, or climate change – is a matter of consensus by the specialists in the field about which best accounts for the data. [emphasis mine]

The climate change issue is one of the big reasons I am homeschooling my kids. So they can't be bullied into believing the leftist religion of global warming or climate change. This global warming/ climate change craze has been going on for at least 100 years with groups rotating the claims of ice age and heat catastrophe every now and then.

The religious people in the world are using this global warming issue every time it is brought up to support their idea's that science is bunk. What this issue really is, is a large scale scam by political leftists that desire government money. The scientists that work on weather are often overlooked in importance and their funding was always on the chopping block due to people understanding that weather must take a back seat in funding due to more pressing science issues. So how do climatologists and their institutes guarantee they get funding and stay a top priority? Change the numbers just a bit and say the world is going to end like the religious nutters always do.

If you are a global warming believer or climate change believer, let me ask you this. What if the subject was cancer from smoking and the research was done by cigarette company scientists? Would you question the results of a study or many studies by scientists that would benefit cigarette manufacturers by billions of dollars?

Well, that is what is happening with climate change. Trillions of dollars per year and the control of regulations of all the nations in the world are at stake with climate change and global warming legislation. You tell me, are all scientists immune to the corrupting influence of money and power or might they nudge some numbers over time for the tremendous benefits they can receive if they scare enough people.

As soon as climatologists can accurately start predicting the weather for next week and next month, I will start to consider the possibility that they can predict six months from now, but not 10 or 20 years. Let's leave the proclamations of disaster to the religions please.

What this issue really is, is a large scale scam by political leftists that desire government money. The scientists that work on weather are often overlooked in importance and their funding was always on the chopping block due to people understanding that weather must take a back seat in funding due to more pressing science issues. So how do climatologists and their institutes guarantee they get funding and stay a top priority? Change the numbers just a bit and say the world is going to end like the religious nutters always do.

Were that true, the predictions made by climate scientists years ago would by now be proved wrong. What's happening is that things are even worse than they predicted.

Human-driven climate change is to blame for a series of increasingly hot summers and the situation is already worse than was expected just two decades ago, a top Nasa scientist said on Saturday.

James Hansen, who directs the Nasa Goddard Institute for Space Studies, wrote in the Washington Post that even his “grim” predictions of a warming future, delivered before the US Senate in 1988, were too weak.

“I have a confession to make: I was too optimistic,” Hansen wrote. [emphasis mine]

The League of Conservation Voters (LCV) is spending $1.5 million to defeat five of the most outspoken members of the House of Representatives who believe man-made global warming is a hoax.

The campaign, called “Defeat the Flat Earth Five” will focus on running TV, mail and phone initiatives to spread the message that the members are ignoring science and out of touch with what most Americans believe.

Equating these anti-global warming congressmen with a belief in a flat earth shows how the folks at the LCV are as out of touch with the history of science as they are with the science behind climate change (it changes every day) since no one of any reputation ever believed in a flat earth.

In the end, it’s not about science; it’s about government (tax-payer) grant money.

Scientists live or die by grant money. A long time ago universities began to realize that there’s big money to be made in doing research for the government.

Campus protests in the 1960s and early 1970s were often directed at schools that were doing work for the “Military-Industrial Complex.” The Sterling Hall Bombing that occurred on the campus of the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970 was committed by four young people as a protest against the University’s research connections with the US military during the Vietnam War. It resulted in the death of a university physics researcher. The bombers were after the Army Math Research Center (AMRC) that was housed in the building.

The Manhattan Project, which began in 1939, was led and developed by university professors. The Project eventually employed more than 130,000 people and cost nearly $2 billion ($22 billion in current value). The majority of the money came from the Federal government.

Research is big business that is most often driven by ideology. Those who know how to write the grants get the money. A 2005 study in the journal Nature surveyed 3247 US researchers who were all publicly funded by the National Institutes of Health which is an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services and is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and health-related research. It consists of 27 separate institutes and centers. Out of the scientists questioned, 15.5% admitted to altering design, methodology or results of their studies due to pressure of an external funding source.

With this very brief background study, should we be surprised if scientists who are pushing Global Warming as a man-made disaster would be reluctant to criticize the claim if they knew their funding would be cut? There are big bucks in Global Warming. Those who are pushing it are mostly ideologues with a larger political agenda.

Most Americans have an idealized opinion of scientists, that they are somehow detached from the mundane world of power, prestige, and fortune. If you believe this, then you also believe that Tiger Woods only cares about golf and the purity of the sport. Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould has written:

We shouldn’t be surprised that climate scientists might fudge the evidence to keep the grant money coming in. Who’s really getting harmed? Anyway, the kids need new shoes and an investment portfolio so they can get into the best universities so they can work for a university that gets grant money.

If these scientists and politicians were really concerned about Global Warming, would 15,000 delegates and officials, 5,000 journalists, and 98 world leaders meet in far way places for a Climate Summit?[2] Why not set up a teleconferencing system? Really show the world what can be done to “save the planet.”

More than 1200 limos were called into service for a meeting in Copenhagen in 2009. Majken Friss Jorgensen, managing director of Copenhagen’s biggest limousine company, said that there weren’t enough limos in the country to fulfill the demand. “We’re having to drive them in hundreds of miles from Germany and Sweden,” she says. This does not count the huge carbon footprint that was created by the number of private jets (more than 140) that were used. The eleven-day conference, including the participants’ travel, created a total of 41,000 tons of “carbon dioxide equivalent.”

It’s all a scam. Newsweek “did a cover issue warning us of global cooling on April 28, 1975. And The New York Times, Aug. 14, 1976, reported ‘many signs that Earth may be headed for another ice age.’” In 1974, the National Science Board announced: “During the last 20 to 30 years, world temperature has fallen, irregularly at first but more sharply over the last decade. Judging from the record of the past interglacial ages, the present time of high temperatures should be drawing to an end . . . leading into the next ice age.” Gary Sutton, writing in an online article for Forbes, makes the point:

You can’t blame these scientists for sucking up to the fed’s mantra du jour. Scientists live off grants. Remember how Galileo recanted his preaching about the earth revolving around the sun? He, of course, was about to be barbecued by his leaders. Today’s scientists merely lose their cash flow. Threats work.[3]

Of course, they can be blamed when they (1) claim that they are doing real science, (2) there is no contrary evidence, and (3) what contrary evidence they do find they suppress it. So the next time someone dogmatically asserts that the majority of scientists believe in Global Warming, ask your antagonist how much grant money he’s getting?

Since you claimed 99% of Climate Scientists are not doing real science, I checked the scientific credentials of your source.

Godfather Politics doesn't speak for the scientific community, Robert. I couldn't find any mission statement for them, or institution of origin, or address. It just seems to be a conservative political site without public affiliation. This lack of accountability does not impress me. If you want something you can get your hands on, that doesn't evaporate when you look closely,

... America's Climate Choices, a series of studies requested by Congress. The committee that authored the report included renowned scientists and engineers, economists, business leaders, an ex-governor, a former congressman, and other policy experts.

Did you look at the scientific credentials of your author, Gary DeMar? His website

has this mission statement:

American Vision’s (AV’s) mission has been to RestoreAmericato its Biblical Foundation—from Genesis to Revelation since 1978. We realize that this task requires a strategy to “Make disciples (not just converts) of all nations and teach them to obey and apply the Bible to all of life”

So basically you accept the claims of Christians who want to make a disciple of you, so you will obey and apply the Bible to all of life, on their say-so, no evidence required. But at the same time you cast out the consensus of thousands of credentialed scientists doing actual data collection, under the critical scrutiny of their peers.

Who do you trust, Robert Brown, with your children's future? When science and religion-based politics disagree, why do you so easily trust religion-based climate denial? You wouldn't be here if you couldn't question. You cast out religion once. But you didn't notice it pulling the strings behind this curtain.

Thanks for your appreciation of my other posts here. I really mean that. When so few discussions receive any response I sometimes feel as if my interest is unwelcome.

I just wanted to say I appreciate the research you do and all of the articles you post. I don't agree with everything you submit like global warming being man made, but at least you are putting stuff out there for people to discuss and think about. Very cool.

Robert D. Stolorow at Huffington Post attributes widespread indifference to the threat climate change poses to our children to narcissism. His condemnation of our generation is more severe than Mark Hertsgaard.

On October 5, 2012, on the front page of The Huffington Post, appeared a terrifying image of melting arctic ice, accompanied by the chilling headline, "Arctic Ice Melt and Sea Level Rise May Be 'Decades Ahead Of Schedule.'" Why have the majority of Americans and American politicians been largely oblivious to this extreme threat? I believe there are two principal reasons.

The first is unbridled narcissism. Psychoanalytic developmental theorist Erik Erikson famously characterized an essential aim of adulthood as generativity -- the caring for the well being of future generations. Climate change most likely will not be a threat for most of us, but it will leave our children, grandchildren, and future descendants with catastrophes of unimaginable proportions. In the deplorable obliviousness and indifference to the problem of climate change, any concern for the well being of future generations is being blatantly trumped by narrow self-interest and greed. [emphasis mine]

Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released... and here is the chart to prove it

That's the headline to a great article relaying the latest MET Office (the United Kingdom's national weather service) research published in the UK Mail online science section. The final paragraph is to make those true believers of global warming feel better in their transition to the temperature facts.

I strongly recommend people read this to reign in some of the end of the world feer mongering that is going on. We get that enough from the religious crowd.

Here is a little tidbit from the middle of the article:

Here are three not-so trivial questions you probably won’t find in your next pub quiz. First, how much warmer has the world become since a) 1880 and b) the beginning of 1997? And what has this got to do with your ever-increasing energy bill?

You may find the answers to the first two surprising. Since 1880, when reliable temperature records began to be kept across most of the globe, the world has warmed by about 0.75 degrees Celsius.

From the start of 1997 until August 2012, however, figures released last week show the answer is zero: the trend, derived from the aggregate data collected from more than 3,000 worldwide measuring points, has been flat.

Living a healthier and cleaner lifestyle and encouraging others to do so should be about general health and well-being and not for fear of death, destruction and the end of the world or HELL as the religious would put it.